Reinventing Europe? Turkey, European Union Accession and Europeanization

Abstract

This chapter offers a critique of the prevailing view within ‘old’ European Union member states that EU enlargement is essentially a problem for the accession states. EU enlargement is not only a core project through which the EU has established its comparative international advantage in ‘soft’ power by means of the instrument of the conditionality attached to accession (Leonard, 2005). In addition, each enlargement round — 1973, 1981, 1986, 1995, 2004 and 2007/8 — has been a stimulus to reflect on the nature of the EU’s identity, to reinvent what it does, how it sees itself and how ‘older’ member states relate to it. The ‘big bang’ enlargement to East Central Europe (and Cyprus and Malta) in May 2004 was a particularly dramatic example, underlining the acute adjustment problems among ‘old’ member states. Enlargement to the western Balkans, and especially to Turkey, further highlights the extent to which the EU is challenged to reinvent itself: whether by a continuing collective ‘deepening’, a ‘rolling back’ of collective EU action, or new forms of ‘differentiated’ integration (at the extreme a ‘core’ Europe, perhaps based on the euro area or a ‘directorate’ of large states). ‘Deepening’ and ‘differentiation’ have been the historic patterns, but continuity is not assured if a particular enlargement acts as a critical juncture in EU development.